


Mortal City

by Susan



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:16:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Susan/pseuds/Susan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch threatens to quit the force. </p>
<p>“It’s the city, Starsk. I can feel it sometimes, like it’s alive.  And it’s playing with us.  Watching and waiting for us to make a mistake.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mortal City

“I’m done with this. I quit,” Hutch said again. 

He said it in the courthouse, when their star witness couldn’t or wouldn’t identify the defendant. He said it again in Dobey’s office an hour later, as he slammed the report—twenty pages and one conviction too thin—on his desk. He said it all the way home in the car while he scribbled a letter of resignation on paper torn from his notebook. It used to take a dead kid to get him started. Not anymore. 

Hutch sat on the couch in the living room, legs stretched out in front of him, eyes closed, the heels of his hands rubbing tight circles against his temples. The sun was going down outside, throwing long shadows against the wall. 

“You say that every time it happens,” Starsky said. “You’re the cop who cried wolf.” He stared at him from the kitchen and felt something cold and familiar and inevitable settle in his stomach. 

“I mean it this time,” Hutch said without looking at him. 

“You say that every time, too.” 

Starsky searched for subtitles in the growing darkness. 

Hutch sighed and leaned forward. Then he loosened his tie, patted down his jacket pockets, and pulled out a crushed pack of Marlboros. He threw them on the coffee table in front of him. Starsky raised one eyebrow, but said nothing. 

“Don’t look at me like you’re my mother. Someone left them in the men’s room at the courthouse. I . . .” he looked for the word, “retrieved them.” 

He picked them up and tapped one out, rolled it between his fingers like a joint. 

“I loved smoking, did I ever tell you that? Before sex, after sex, whenever. I never wanted to quit, it was Vanessa who hated them. I quit for her. Lot of good it did me in the end.” 

He leaned back in the chair and held the cigarette to his mouth between two fingers. There was a silence. 

“Are you going to make me quit smoking too, Starsk? Hold my hand till I was back on the straight and narrow? Or would you rather hold my cock?”

“You’re an ass sometimes, you know.”

Hutch ignored him. Or agreed with him, it was hard to tell which. 

“Get me a beer while you’re standing there. Shit, get me six. And a match.” 

Liquid therapy again tonight, then. Starsky opened the fridge. Twelve beers and nothing else. Another six pack on the floor. He’d order pizza. Again. For the hundredth time in the last few months, he wondered how they got here. Where alcohol replaced sex, and sex replaced . . . fuck it. He wasn’t going to brood tonight. That was Hutch’s job. His job was pretending he didn’t care, that everything was fine, that he wasn’t scared to death by what was happening to them.

“Hutch . . .”

Hutch held up a warning finger. “And don’t Hutch me. Not tonight.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I ever wanted this job. I should’ve listened to my father.”

He was talking about his father before his first beer. The elder Mr. H usually didn’t make an appearance till at least one six-pack was dead and buried. 

Starsky called for the pizza. Extra cheese, extra grease. 

He reached for the light switch as he crossed the room and Hutch told him to leave it off.

“Nothing to see here, folks,” he said. “Move along.” 

Hutch shifted to make space for him on the couch. Starsky handed him the bottle and settled in beside him, their shoulders and legs barely touching. His own beer was sweating and he wiped a damp palm across his pants and leaned in against him. From habit, he supposed. There was little comfort there these days.

“Why didn’t you? Listen to your father, I mean?” 

Hutch smiled, or it passed for a smile. “Because I wanted to piss him off.” 

“And did you?”

“Yep. Not as much as I hoped. But by then I’d started at the academy and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of quitting.” He shrugged. “And then . . .” 

Starsky turned to look at him, and just for a moment he saw the other Hutch, the one he’d met that first week at the academy. Short hair and clean upper lip. Shiny badge and shiny shoes. The one who always knew who the bad guys were. He wondered now if maybe he’d made him up, had wanted to believe so badly, that he’d made Hutch believe it too. 

“And now?” 

Hutch wrapped his hand around Starsky’s tie, pulled him close. “Fuck ‘em all,” he said angrily, then kissed him hard, open-mouthed, all tongue and teeth and heat. He grabbed Starsky’s free hand and held it against the bulge under his cords. He moaned and pushed up against Starsky’s hand. 

Starsky pulled his hand away and stood up. “Christ, Hutch, knock it off. You don’t need me for that.” 

Hutch raised both hands in mock surrender. 

Starsky stared at him. “Do you really mean it this time? About quitting?” 

“Yeah. But I’ve only had one beer. Ask me again after six.” 

Hutch held his gaze, daring him to say something.

“You used to know after two.”

Hutch was off the couch, heading for the fridge. “You’re a pushy bastard, you know that?” He held the bottle in one hand while he pulled open drawers. Looking for matches, probably. A minute later Hutch said, “You staying over?” Like it didn’t matter to him either way. 

Maybe it didn’t. And that frightened Starsky most of all.

 

ooOOoo

Starsky lay beside him, trying to sleep, trying not to think. He turned on his side, one hand tucked under the pillow, while the other one reached out and traced the path it had memorized years before. From cheek to chin. From the hollow of his neck down to his chest. Even here, Hutch had changed—the leanness he’d loved was gone. He found the new scar, still raised and rough under his fingers. 

He knew it would be easy to say that that was when it all started going to hell, after Hutch was shot and he’d acted like a fool with Meredith. But life wasn’t like that. It wasn’t one big thing, it was countless smaller ones, one after another after another. Death by a thousand cuts, like in that book he’d read as a kid. 

Hutch stirred, opened one eye. “Still awake?” he asked. 

“Can’t sleep.”

“You need to drink more.” He reached out and touched Starsky’s cheek with one hand and smiled.

“You need to drink less.” 

“It’s the city, Starsk. I can feel it sometimes, like it’s alive. And it’s playing with us. Watching and waiting for us to make a mistake.” 

Starsky turned and kissed the palm of Hutch’s hand. He felt something shift between them then, like the calm that comes after a storm. Maybe the worst was over. But then he felt a twisting in his gut. Maybe the calm was really just the eye of a hurricane.


End file.
